Then They Set the House on Fire: When Smart People Self-Sabotage

"Smart people, when bored, will burn down the house just so as to have something to do rebuilding it."

-Me

I have been lucky in my life to have met and known very smart and gifted people. They have been my friends and my classmates; I have interacted and worked with them; and some I have been lucky to be inspired by. As such, I have had plenty of opportunity to observe them, to listen to them speak, and to know how they think and act.

One thing is for sure, that society rides on the shoulders of very smart people. These are the ones who see things not just as they are but as they should and could be. With their creativity, they give us new solutions to problems we never knew we had. Smart people have an insatiable penchant for challenging the status quo. It is because of them that we have phones in our hands and computers on our desks. It is smart people who keep the economy running and the planes in the sky. They tend to sit behind the scenes making difficult, almost impossible things, work. Their intelligence, creativity, and ingenuity are God’s gift to humanity.

And yet despite all this, something else about these smart people has puzzled me for a long time. Many of them have a tendency to act against their own interests in a manner than can best be described as intentional self-sabotage. I have seen smart people sinking in folly and hubris, not because they do not know better, but for reasons that defy all logic. Whether intentionally or otherwise, they act and behave in ways that defy their reputation of brilliance.

Like a snake biting its own tail, very smart people so often descend into the abyss of senseless sensuality to their own detriment. I have seen them crave and indulge in empty pleasure, and even cleave onto it. Whether it's drugs, alcohol, sex, and all forms of pointlessly self-harming pleasure, all these seem to have a special spell on very smart people. It is not like these smart people get from these indulgences the deep enjoyment and fulfilment they tend to get from their work, either. When very smart people self-sabotage in these ways, there is usually an unmistakable sense of despair and cynicism in their faces. Yes, they appear carefree and happy, but it is a carefreeness that reeks of a cry for help.

It begins with a despondence and a deep sense of emptiness that arises out of seeming rationality, thanks to that person’s aptitude for logic and common sense. Have you ever detected cynicism in someone, but then on a closer look realized that it was almost a justifiable form of cynicism, a rational cynicism? That is what I have seen in very smart people. While at the surface they may have a fecund and thriving intellectual and creative life, this very brilliance tends to feed a cancerous cynicism below. And that is worth taking note of.

At the very extreme, these smart people tend to come to the conclusion that itself is pointless and meaningless. In their brilliance and logic, they may come to the end of the road where their questions lack answers and their dreams drowned in futility, causing them to give up on life itself. Luckily, most of them lack the courage to act on this sense of despair and end it all by taking their own lives; instead, they live out life in a bottomless pit of perpetual emptiness in their souls and minds. For some few, however, they do hop on the noose and end their lives for good; I have not known a sadness darker and more painful in my life than the suicide of very smart people I know. And I have a story to tell about that.

This epidemic of self-sabotage among our most brilliant people is neither normal nor rational at all, and it deserves our attention. What is really happening, and more importantly, what can be done about it? It seems that being intelligent is the very greatest source of despair and mental disease. But remember that truly smart, gifted, and ambitious people are rare. This epidemic is a waste of brilliance. We owe it to ourselves to understand why it is the case and, hopefully, address it. That is what we will attempt to do in this essay.

So, why do smart people tend to self-sabotage?

Boredom

I wager that there are few things in the world more dangerous than a brilliant mind in a lackluster world. Exceptionally smart and creative minds also tend to be monkey minds with the primal desire to hop from tree to tree and branch to branch. They crave stimulation and adventure. And yet these minds have to live and thrive in this rather mundane world where uninteresting and unstimulating things happen, slowly. They are forced to contend with their inability to withstand mundaneness and which also happens to be the source of their creativity. As a result, the smart person tends to invent all manner of mischief in an attempt to appease their restless minds. They are never short of mischief, even if it means hurting themselves and sabotaging their own lives – burning down the house – just so as to not be bored. A smart individual would gladly slice their arm to feel the pain rather than live feeling nothing; to them, distraction has no price tag. But this does come at a cost, because, in the end, that distraction often becomes their own destruction.

Disappointment

The smartest people I have met have had from their childhood lofty and daring dreams, high expectations of themselves, and visions of mustering their domains. They tend to naturally have very high standards and to expect much. Their sights are fixed high, and they know nothing less but the greatest possible achievement. This comes with the obstinate refusal to bend to accommodate lower standards.

But the world is not perfect and, often, even if we get to achieve our loftiest dreams, there are bound to be innumerable setbacks and painful missteps along the way. Very smart people, therefore, are the most likely to be slapped with the sort of disappointment in life that leads to disillusionment. While they see and pursue the world as it could be, they have to contend with the world as it is. And that is hard. In attempting to create this ideal world, the smart person may get out of touch with reality and slowly sink into an abyss of disappointment and despair. There, they begin to sabotage themselves and undo the progress they had made.

Unhealthy curiosity

Smart people’s minds seem to constantly ask the questions, what lies beyond the rules? Why do the rules exist in the first place? What will happen if break the rules? What will really happen if I push X button? Yes, I know that I was told something bad will happen, but I want to see for myself. Most smart people have trouble accepting the fact that some things just are, and that they should be let be. They want to experiment with the alternatives. Very smart people are naturally wired to want to break the rules. They have little respect for the status quo. And they often end up getting their fingers burnt for it. Remember, these people have a knack for seeing the world as it could be, and while this has its advantages, it also tends to manifest as unhealthy curiosity which leads to self-sabotage, particularly in moments of disillusionment.

Ego

We have seen that highly creative and smart minds have a hard time adapting to a lackluster world. Their attempts to create the world that they imagine in their minds is constantly opposed by the unforgiving nature of reality. And this is where it gets interesting because, even though reality tries to prove them wrong over and over, smart people tend to be obstinate. Simply put, a big brain sometimes comes with a big ego. They can be unrelenting even in the face of error, unwilling to let reality prove them wrong. I have personally struggled with accepting the fact that I can take responsibility for the things that I need to without necessarily thinking having to carry the whole world on my shoulders.

Intelligence can so often come prepackaged with a dose of pride, and when that happens, the blessing becomes the curse.

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Part 2

How not to burn down the house

One thing is for sure: truly ambitious, smart, creative, and highly driven individuals are rare. Society makes leaps and bounds of inventiveness and progress thanks to them.

This fact, therefore, begs the important and urgent question, how can we not burn down the house? What can be done to minimize the chances that smart people self-sabotage?

Society is (mostly) to blame

Not only is the world somewhat boring and mundane for the hyperactive brains of smart people, but society is also to blame for failing to create the conditions and chances necessary to leverage and protect brilliance. And that blame lies ever so squarely on the developing world, and African societies in particular.

We have cultures that give the least attention to human potential. We give no concern to the brilliance and giftedness that abounds among our people. There are no structures and systems designed to ensure that any and every person with potential - the truly smart people - have sufficient support and avenues to actualize that potential. Our cultures instead, sideline their smartest people and pedestalize the worst of themselves – the thieves, the sycophants, and the non-wits.

Smart and gifted kids are left to rot in the trenches with their potential wasted, all because they were born into a society and context that does not value human potential as the true seed of progress. Without equality of opportunity, the chances that potential is discovered and leveraged are almost zero, and our whole society suffers as a result. Such a society does neither see nor champion for its smartest people; this has been the greatest of the errors of our country in the last half-century.

Until that error is righted, until our society begins to value and look out for potential and talent, we will continue to live in a third-world society where the light of intelligence and the fruits of thinking are unrealized. Our smartest kids will remain splattered across the country in taters, holding onto pencils and dog-eared exercise books, dreaming of a future that they may never grasp.

And the smart people, having no chance to self-actualize, will inevitably resort to careless self-sabotage.

The Smart Individual

But that is not the whole story, either; for oftentimes even when opportunity is made available, smart people still tend to self-sabotage in ways that belie sensibility. There seems to be a general paucity of training in and mastery of rather simple life skills and values among the smartest people and which makes them easy prey to the simplest vicissitudes of life. And these people are not to blame for that. By their very nature as restless, wildly creative, and ambitious, smart people have to adhere to specific disciplines just so as to forestall the possibility of self-sabotage.

I have wrestled with this challenge throughout my twenties. I will endeavor to share here a few insights I that have gleaned from my learning and adapting through many instances of self-sabotage on my part.

Mindfulness: This involves a disciplined attempt to put reigns on the monkey mind so that it serves you rather than submitting to its whims. Smartness does not equate to level-headedness and rationality, and therefore we cannot always rely on the brilliant mind to lead, we cannot follow it too much; there is need to lead it. And one way to do that is through mindfulness practices such as controlled breathing and meditation. There has been an interesting resurgence of these practices in recent years. And I do not mean meditation in a religious sense. I am referring to the simple act of observing and paying attention to the mind and thoughts. You do not have to follow any fancy formula; just create pouches of time within the day to you keenly observe your thoughts. Bring to conscious awareness those threads of thought which have become entangled deep in your psyche. A basic rationale for this process is that the mind can be bridled and controlled like a battle horse rather than simply leaving it to run wild like a bull. When a brilliant mind is subjected to such discipline of mindfulness, then more of its good fruit can be had while keeping in reigns its other rather destructive side.

Faith: One of the most personal and challenging journeys I have been on for the last six years has been a rediscovering of faith and belief. Like many of my peers, I had a religious upbringing, but which I began to question and struggle with starting in my late teens. I have come to learn that faith of a religious nature is a reliable pillar against which a person – a person with questions about life – can rest their doubts and find the peace necessary to focus on living an effective life. In the words of Jordan Peterson, faith is a ‘place to box your ignorance so that you can act.’ It is okay to wonder and ask the difficult existential questions, but if I do that all the time, if I spent all my mental energy pontificating about things that are better explained through faith, then I may never have the space and time to actually be effective in a practical sense. Faith reminds us of the infiniteness of existence and gives rationale to our finiteness within it. And that way it protects the smart individual from the hubris and pride of brilliance.

Support systems: It is the nature of genius that it tends to fall in love with its own wits. Intelligence comes pre-packaged with a dose of ego that lies to the individual that they can do it on their own, that in the words of Einrik Ibsen, ‘the strongest person in the world is he who stands alone.’ But as we have seen in a previous post, intelligence is a network, and brilliance only gains effectiveness when it is engaged with other equally brilliant minds. Reality almost always opposes the lone genius fallacy. Smart people need networks of support that they can lean on and spaces where they can lay their vulnerabilities. You do not necessarily have to get rid of your ego as a gifted person. God gave it to you for a reason; what’s important is to understand it, muster it, and use it to become effectual. Then one must be able to realize when they need help and seek it out. You will be surprised how eager and willing other people are to help you. And the best support systems one can have are able and capable partners who challenge and bring out the best in you. If you find love, keep it. Seek out friends and partners who are better than you, more talented than you, and whom you can’t easily beat - and keep their company.

Momentum: There is a scene in the TV series Peaky Blinders in which Tommy Shelby, having been asked to take a vacation from the family business, insists on getting back to work, saying, ‘I have learnt that there is no rest for a man like me in this world.’ I have found that this is the case for the smartest people I know – they have no choice but to constantly be active and useful. A smart person to take up worthwhile challenges, and creative people have to keep creating. Brilliance demands to be spent. What gives life meaning is the feeling that one’s ability is being expended as much as possible and that one is moving forward towards a lofty and important goal. It is necessary, therefore, for smart and talented people to activate the potential within with real and intentional action. Gifted people need to be intentional about channeling their energy and talents towards responsibilities and duties which they care about. When that is not done, the untapped force of brilliance and talent boils up within and implodes. And then the house catches fire.